Tomorrow, Microsoft will unveil its Japanese version of Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 to the Japanese market. This new product, with a special name called Σ(SIGMA) will made available on this Saturday in 秋叶原, i.e. Akihabara, Japan. Akihabara is known as one of the world’s largest market for electrical appliances, and also a symbol of Tokyo.

There will be a big event tomorrow in that area, starting from 1pm. To know more detail, you can go to this site.

This week I came across a new software that turned itself from a $65 shareware to open source, it’s Enso that developed by Humanized. I like what they’ve said in one of their blog posts: It’s the destiny of all software to eventually become free. If you’re in the middle developing a new software, be awared to this statement if you want to develop a software with a price tag in the software industry.

If you’re the first time that heard of Enso, it’s in fact an interface tool that help a user to write commands to her computer, such as open calculator, open internet explorer, open firefox, and etc. It is available on Windows platform and based on a product concept that instead of go through few steps in opening the Windows menu, all you have to do is press the “Caps Lock” key and write your command. Once the command is typed, simply release the Caps Lock and it’s done, the application you intended to open is display on your computer screen.

Some have compared this software tool with Quicksilver, a Mac tool with a similar functionality, but Humanized has insisted Enso was based on the different kind of technologies.

Microsoft is releasing the newest service pack to the family of Windows XP, called the Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1. This SP3 bringing in a host of security updates, fixes in addition to some new improvements. It is subtly billed as an update program file known as kb936929, and indeed a hefty download that weighs in at 336.1MB. The purpose of this release is to fill the gaps that any Windows XP user when they installing the updates, any particular important update they might missed. Thus, any Windows XP SP1 or SP2 user can install this SP3. On top of that, this is a product strategy that Microsoft want to please its existing Windows XP users that their PCs did not support the Windows Vista.

Some enhancements can be found on this SP3, such as the Network Access Protection, that allowed Windows XP PCs to leverage Windows Server 2008 capabilities, Black Hole Router Protection, and many more.

Skype is back in business after its service outage last Thursday, for a period up to 36 hours, and this caused million of users can’t logged in to the service last week. Though this morning I read eBay’s explanation (English) and (Mandarin), I believed many users still wondering what was the main reason that caused this worst outage in Skype’s five year history. Unlike any other service disruption, Skype said the disruption was due to a large number of Skype users restarting their computers after installing the routine Windows update on the second Tuesday of every month. In Skype’s post, they didn’t mentioned precisely what in particular about the August’s update has led to the Skype crash and indeed this kind of vague explanation on this issue outlines the necessity of another round of explanation.

“Windows Updates” was the key feature of Microsoft’s OS strategy. It cost Microsoft a certain amount of money to set up their team in developing the security patches in a “periodic” time frame in spite of us, as the users sometimes didn’t realized whether these updates really meet our own computing demand. However, for Skype service outage, and their explanation for this was due to the Windows periodic updates nonetheless remained controversial. Will it served as an unexpected boon to some of the Skype peer-to-peer competitors? Well, time will tell.

There is always a doubt, i.e. memory capacity for current Windows XP users when they plan for an upgrade of their operating system to Vista version. A memory manufacturer called Crucial Technology has unveiled its Windows Vista memory scanner, i.e. Am I Vista Ready as the above button showed. Its functionality is to advice the users whether the amount of memory in their computers are enough to run Windows Vista. It is a software that requires Internet Explorer browser and the use of ActiveX technology to scan the system. By the way, this software also downloadable if a user is using Firefox or Opera browser. After a user download this software and run it in the computer, he/she will get upgrade result on the Web.

My sense is that in the coming few months, it is not surprise if we would come across a lot of tools or utilities that help the public along the way in upgrading or installing Windows Vista. But I think the real question is: am I going to upgrade my system to Windows Vista?